Seismologist
Salt Lake City, Utah
Seismology /
Full Time /
Hybrid
Role Overview
Title: Seismologist
Hours: Full-time; Salaried
Benefits Eligible: Yes
Manager: CTO
Mission – Why we exist and why we need you
Geothermal energy is the most abundant renewable energy source in the world. There is 2,300 times more energy in geothermal heat in the ground than in oil, gas, coal, and methane combined. However, historically it’s been hard to find and expensive to develop. At Zanskar, we’re using new tools to find and develop new geothermal resources in order to make geothermal a cheap and vital contributor to a carbon-free electrical grid. The seismology team at Zanskar is at the cutting edge of developing tools to characterize and image the plumbing systems within geothermal reservoirs, which is important for production and injection well siting, as well as reservoir engineering.
Outcomes - Problems you’ll solve
We are searching for a seismologist to grow our team and expand our capabilities. Specifically, we are interested in candidates with DAS processing or seismic source modeling expertise, but are open to exceptional seismologists without those two specialties, too.
Zanskar is solving many subsurface challenges associated with geothermal reservoirs using seismological data, principally from large-N arrays and DAS data. Within this work, the DAS expert would help improve our workflow for cleaning DAS data (Distributed Acoustic Sensing) using deep learning methods. The DAS expert will also help assemble and label both surface and borehole DAS seismic data for different types of events, including but not limited to microseismic and teleseismic earthquakes, as well as surface waves and long period events. The seismic source modeling specialist will help run finite element or finite difference simulations of seismic sources, including but not limited to microearthquakes and long period events. Additionally, the new Seismologist will be involved in seismic imaging (both nodal and DAS recordings) and other R&D efforts within Zanskar to help us improve our seismic workflows for imaging and characterizing geothermal reservoirs.
Success in this role will look like patentable workflows and tools that our team will deploy in the field in the next year to find, de-risk, and develop geothermal resources that can be developed into commercial power plants for our purposes.
Competencies – What we’re looking for
Seismic understanding: Successful candidates must have a PhD degree in Geophysics or Seismology or a closely related technical field with proven experience working with seismological recordings. DAS (Distributed Acoustic Sensing) related experience is a bonus but not required.
Technical capability: Experience processing and analyzing seismological recordings. Proficient in programming with one or more of MATLAB, Python, Fortran, C++, etc. Geophysical software development experience is a plus and experience with deep learning methods applied to seismological data is also a plus.
Roadmap development: The seismologist must be able to chart solutions and define a roadmap to building tools to solve real development problems in geothermal. Poor candidates need to be told what to do or how to approach problems, while standout candidates will be able to define what are the most important problems to solve and how to solve them.
Project management: After defining a roadmap, the seismologist must be able to execute according to tight schedules with exceptional organizational and time management skills in a responsive manner. Good verbal and written communication skills are essential.
Location, Salary, and Benefits
- The position is located in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area
- Full time position. Salary range $80,000 - $140,000
- Paid holidays and 15 days PTO
- Medical and dental coverage
- A direct impact in displacing future carbon emissions
$80,000 - $140,000 a year
Equal Opportunity Employer
Zanskar is an equal opportunity employer (EOE) and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local employment practice laws.
Please reach out to careers@zanskar.us with any questions.
